Cape Verde by www.born2travel.it

if you want to know more or see all the photos visit: 27.11. 2005 Sal Island (CAPE VERDE) We have been in flight for five hours now. Another two await us.. Before this we flew over African countries, very moving... low white houses and the desert from above... Once we arrived, after a short walk along the water's edge (which, incidentally, because of the high salinity of the water, lit by the sun's rays, was pink, what a sight!), we stripped off: out with the long trousers, the jacket and the shoes... wearing only our swimsuits and flip-flops we spent the whole afternoon wandering around discovering this new place. In the morning, with my aunt and Claudia, we took a taxi and went to visit the town closest to our resort: Santa Maria.

Our taxi suddenly stops in a big open area, and I say: "No, sorry, take us to the centre of town!" "This is the centre" (what a grand word!), a square, but what am I saying square, an open lot, bare, desolate, with a couple of skeletal dogs snapping at each other; one of them made me die laughing when, to shelter from the excessive heat, it dug a ditch in the sand and stuck itself inside! Once out of the car we are set upon by many street vendors, all Senegalese or from Guinea-Bissau! (as in: there is always someone worse off than someone else!) Among them was Ismail, a likeable Senegalese who acted as our guide; he took us everywhere, explained a few things about Cape Verde, about how many Italians are investing a lot of money here building tourist villages! At my suggestion he showed us where he lived...

A small room, dirty and smelly, that he shared with five other compatriots: what a slap in the face of poverty our resort is by comparison, so close yet so far... In Ismail's home there is no water and no bathroom; they wash, when they can, in the public showers or in the sea; the women go to the public fountain to cook or wash and fill their buckets... At 11.30 we watched, from the pier, the boats returning after the fishing trip! What a sight! Just like in documentaries! They arrived with these boats full of fish and cleaned and sold them right there on the spot. In the afternoon we finally plunge for the first time into the Atlantic Ocean. How lovely! [Claudia]: "This is happiness too"

28. 11. 2005 Sal Island (CAPE VERDE)

Up early, after all we still haven't got used to the time zone; we open our eyes together with the herons strolling under our balcony. In a ramshackle, half-broken taxi driven by the likeable Nelson, we visited the town of Palmeira, a very small but delightful little harbour, with a few Senegalese selling counterfeit shoes (badly, on top of that) and a few Cape Verdeans idling in the sun. Talking with some Italians who live here, they told me that those who do the most humble jobs are the ones who come from Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Ghana, Togo, Sierra Leone, and this because Cape Verdeans have little desire to work. Who knows why, perhaps it is really in the philosophy of islanders in general not to stress yourself too much and to work little; I saw it at the airport too when the porters unloaded the luggage, they did it with such phlegm as if to say: "Nobody is chasing us!"

From there we went to Espargos to visit a salt pan; it felt like being in Israel, there were real mountains of salt and a basin very similar to the Dead Sea, in which even when you dived in you stayed afloat... completely covered in salt...

On the way back we stopped in a desolate village where there were many children playing in the "street" (street in a manner of speaking because it was an immense dusty expanse of sand). I had the taxi stop and with my aunt we handed out many "little gifts" to the children: T-shirts, caps, little rucksacks, bumbags, pens etc. They literally set upon me, they looked like so many bees on honey.. and the honey... was me... With a brief pit stop at the airport, we book a domestic flight to the island of Boavista.

29. 11. 2005 Sal Island (CAPE VERDE)

Today the ocean was angry! Jeff and I took the chance for a trip to Santa Maria. We came across one of those classic African football pitches: immense, without lines or goalposts with nets; there was a little group of kids playing football, barefoot, in shirts of big European clubs, and so I joined in too... what fun! But nobody ever passed me the ball!?!

30. 11. 2005 Rabil (CAPE VERDE)

30. 11. 2005 Rabil (CAPE VERDE) Careful about calling Cape Verdeans "Africans", they get angry; they are creoles, not Africans!

This morning we flew to the island of Boavista with a Cabo Verde Airlines flight. Unaware, we were about to live the most exciting adventure of the whole trip. After a 20-minute flight, there was barely any check-in at the airport; once landed we hire a pick-up jeep with a driver: Francisco, a likeable young man from Guinea-Bissau who kept us company all day!

We make a stop on the dunes of a small desert which, as our friend explained, was formed by sand carried by the wind! From there we set off again towards the romantic and unspoilt Santa Monica beach... there wasn't a living soul, only an immense 18 km white beach with the deep-blue waves of the Atlantic Ocean lapping its shore. We relaxed there for a while, we and the nature that wrapped around us entirely, eating one of the two bananas that made up our lunch and dinner...

Next stop: a tiny village of a few houses where we continued our work as "U.N. ambassadors", handing out pens, pencils, little rucksacks etc. to the many children we met in the little village square... From there, 30 km away, we visit two little villages, after a long dirt-track route (note that the roads are not asphalted but built, stone after stone, by hand, in the true sense of the word, by these poor Africans); we arrive at Joao Galego and are immediately struck by the vivid, bright colours of the little houses. [Aunt Anna]: "They're not doing badly here!"

This is not Africa; Africa is misery, poverty, filth. Here people live peacefully, with little but with dignity, everyone has a smile on their lips, everyone, in their nothingness: they are happy!

At Fundo Das Figueiras we meet a Portuguese nun walking with three very sweet little girls, three "little chocolates"! So cute, they melted my heart when one of them, in a delightful little voice, whispered: "Obrigado" (thank you) to my aunt who had given her a lollipop!...And off we go to the airport...

Having missed the flight, we prepare to make the most of this unexpected turn that shows us glimpses of local life. We then discover what Cape Verdeans do on a typical midweek evening after dinner; it is like seeing Italy 50 years ago, or rather Southern Italy, on an ordinary summer evening... with the difference that now the protagonists were all black. You saw children, barefoot, playing chase in the bare little square in the centre, some elderly ladies (in the style of "Mammy" from "Gone with the Wind"), chatting away peacefully, with their big bottoms, on the makeshift benches talking about this and that.

And what do you want to discuss? Nothing ever happens there! Some old men sitting on the step of the doorway of their brightly coloured houses, their gaze lost perhaps in a distant past that once saw them courting a beautiful island girl, or catching a big fish or even a shark, since there are many here.

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